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Published on 4 August 2014 by Le Monde / www.alternet.org
The days when U.S.-backed armed forces overthrew constitutional, democratically elected governments are long gone.
“In this country, they apply what the left used to call a ‘combination of all forms of struggle’. And if you make a list of the people involved, they have remained the same since the start; it’s the same organisations ... What changes, every time, is the method.”
Venezuelan interior minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres
On 23 September 2010 the former Ecuadorian president Lucio Gutiérrez (deposed by a popular uprising in 2005) gave a talk to the InterAmerican Institute for Democracy in Miami, criticising his nation’s socialists for their mysticism, incoherent Marxism and dangerous populism. He told his listeners that to end 21st-century socialism in Ecuador (the subject of his talk), it would be necessary to get rid of President Rafael Correa.
His speech is on record; there’s a video that captures the thunderous applause it received. In the audience were Mario Ribadeneira, a minister in the government of Sixto Durán-Ballén (president 1992-96), when Ecuadorian neoliberalism was at its height; Roberto Isaías, wanted for fraud after the collapse of Filanbanco, Ecuador’s largest bank, of which he was part-owner; and Mario Pazmiño, a former head of army intelligence, sacked by Correa in 2008 for having too close a relationship with the CIA.
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Published on 20 July by www.venezuelanalysis.com
Several multilateral meetings were held in the city of Fortaleza, including the 6th BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Summit, and meetings between China and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).
During the BRICS summit, the five emerging economies created a new development bank and a multilateral reserve fund, each of which will potentially hold US $100 billion of pooled capital. The reserve fund will be used to support members of the bloc against adverse economic conditions or external impacts.
The creation of the new institutions is partly motivated by dissatisfaction with the terms of the financial hegemony exercised by the U.S. and its European allies through the IMF and World Bank.
“The strength of our project has positive potential: we want the global [financial] system to be fairer and more equal,” said Brazilian president Dilma Roussef to media.
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Cuban doctors at the Jose Marti Eye Hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay, have administered 50,000 surgeries as part of the program known as Operation Miracle.
Sixto Amaro, a directive with the Social Prevention Bank, told reporters that the achievement will be publicly acknowledged next week and that Operation Miracle has allowed a saving of 100 million dollars in seven years.
The health program has been implemented in Uruguay since 2005 following a bilateral accord between Havana and Montevideo, said Amaro and added that out of the 50,000 eye surgeries, 38 were done on cataracts, which benefited retired persons.
The rest of the surgeries were administered on other eye conditions, PL news agency reported on Wednesday from the Uruguayan capital. Sources at the hospital said that over 70,000 patients are assisted at the center every year, with an average 250 consultations a day and more than 4,000 a month
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News from the AP about the U.S. government’s secret project to create a Cuban Twitter or “ZunZuneo,” to be used for disseminating propaganda and fomenting unrest in Cuba, spurring young people in that country to overthrow their government, comes as no surprise to anyone with even the most cursory understanding of U.S. policy in Cuba and Latin America in general. It is but a tiny part of a 55-year-old, completely unprovoked, genocidal policy against a nation whose only offense is failing to subordinate itself to the will of the U.S. government.
ZunZuneo was initiated and run by the ostensibly “humanitarian” U.S. Agency for International Development through a series of shell corporations which were not supposed to be traced back to the government. The project is typical of the type of subversion and interference with another nation that the U.S. government has always felt entitled to undertake, regardless of the principles of sovereignty and self-determination fundamental to international law.
Due to Cuba’s successful revolution in 1959 and their ongoing ability to resist U.S. subversion of their socioeconomic system, U.S. actions against the tiny nation in the Carribean have been harsher than any other victim who fails to recognize the U.S. as its rightful master. Early destabilization efforts included a vicious campaign of terrorism against Cuba, part of a massive CIA effort that later evolved into a policy of providing safe haven to terrorist exile groups and looking the other way as they violate the U.S. Neutrality Act and international law.
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Argentina is facing the potential of a new financial crisis after it defied legal attempts to force it to repay US$1.33 billion in debt owed to the so-called “vulture” funds that have pursued the country for more than a decade. Over the weekend the Argentine government proceeded with a $US539 million payment to creditors that had agreed to restructured debt terms following the country’s 2002 default.
But it has ignored a US Supreme Court order to pay out a group of mainly New York-based “hold out” hedge funds. These had refused the country’s restructured terms and are demanding a payment of $1.33 billion. US Supreme Court Judge Thomas Griesa described Argentina’s payment to the restructured debt holders as illegal and “explosive”, ordering the Bank of New York Mellon to return the money to Argentina. The judge has pleaded with Argentine authorities to negotiate with the hedge funds to avoid a technical default. Argentina argues that paying both classes of creditor would also cause it to default.
A brief history of debt
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Haiti opened on June 11 its third community hospital with the support of Cuba and Brazil, after the earthquake that hit the nation in January 2010.The medical facility was inaugurated by President Michel Martelly at the Carrefour neighborhood, west of the capital Port au Prince and it will benefit a population of more than 60 thousand, according to PL news agency. Martelly stressed the importance of Cuban cooperation in the health sector and in other areas, such as education, fishing, construction and agriculture. Meanwhile, Cuban ambassador to Haiti, Ricardo Garcia, said that the facility, in which Cuban medical specialists will also work, will contribute to the strengthening and reconstruction of the Haitian health system in order to improve the people’s quality of life
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Hugo Moldiz Mercado Granma International
In a tactical shift toward Bolivia, the U.S. State Department has sent Jefferson Brown to the country, indicating a likely increase in subversive activity against the Morales government. He was apparently sent to clean house, and replace all embassy personnel in preparation for the July arrival of a new attaché, Peter Brennan, an uncommon diplomatic practice.
It appears that the White House has decided to make a turn - for the worse - in its relations with Bolivia. After removing Larry Memmott, considered a dove in U.S. secret services circles, the State Department has sent Jefferson Brown, as interim business attaché, who will remain on the job only through June, before handing over the position to the much more experienced hawk, Peter Brennan.
Changes at the U.S. embassy in La Paz are not limited to replacing the business attaché, the highest ranking official present in the country since President Evo Morales expelled Ambassador Philip Golberg in 2008, for engaging in subversive activity in conjunction with hard-line opposition forces in the city of Santa Cruz. All indications point toward the replacement of the entire staff, giving greater weight to secret services and an increase in efforts to destabilize the Morales government, within the framework of a regional counter-offensive.
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By Manuel E. Yepe
A CubaNews translation.Edited by Walter Lippmann.
In light of the recent and ongoing military activities of the United States in Latin America and the Caribbean, there are increasing reasons to question the claim that --because of the crisis over Ukraine, Syria and the suspension of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians-- the region has lost importance in the imperial strategic design of the superpower.
U.S. Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, has just visited Guatemala after participating in the Second Conference of Defense Ministers of North America which was held in Mexico.
Mexico's armed forces had been hosting the "Chimaltlalli 2014," international competition, a military training contest for cadets of the United States, Brazil, Colombia, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico held on the premises of the Heroico Colegio Militar de México.
With advice from the U.S. Southern Command, special force units of the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Forces held an air and sea military simulation assault exercise on the supposed headquarters of a drug lord. It was announced that this exercise was part of a larger month-long training exercise designed to strengthen the response capability of the local authorities against terrorist activities.
The "Bravo" joint assault force of the Southern Command, based in Honduras, along with the U.S. Army 7th Special Forces Group, executed a very peculiar training session at Lake Yojoa. While the helicopter pilots practiced their overwater operations exercising their capacity to operate at low altitude, the members of the strike force practiced jumping from helicopters at a height of ten feet above water.
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Translated by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com
By JOSE MANZANEDA– CUBA INFORMACION, April 28th 2014
In the last two months 162 aggressions against Cuban doctors in Venezuela have been registered. A few days ago, the Venezuelan government gave a medal to two of these people, who were almost burnt alive during an opposition attack on a medical centre in Lara state (1).
These attacks are the result of a huge campaign against Cuba created by the private Venezuelan media – 80% of the media in Venezuela, and totally opposition (2). The campaign has then been broadened by ally international mass media. Over the last two months the message of the supposed Cuban interference in Venezuela has intensified (3). The almost daily publication of rumours, accusations without any basis, and testimonies – some quite insane (4) – of supposed ex intelligence agents (5) have lead many people to firmly believe that it is the Cuban government which makes the main political decisions in Venezuela, or that the Cuban doctors are in reality, agents or spies (6).
In Venezuela there are over 30,000 Cuban doctors (7). They treat around 11 million people, mainly in the working class barrios which, years ago, lacked the most basic health services. Even though the doctors were first deployed on a large scale in 2003 with the inauguration of the Mission Barrio Adentro, the first doctors had already arrived in 1999 as humanitarian personnel after the grave floods in Vargas state (8).